


I Don't Want Anything

by printfogey



Category: One Piece
Genre: Fear, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printfogey/pseuds/printfogey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Water 7, Nami dreams of Skypiea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Want Anything

“What’s more important, adventures or your life?!”the captain had once shouted to her, high up above the clouds on an island where there were so many deeply interesting - and terrifying, and very dangerous - things to find.

What an utterly _Luffy_ thing to say.

“Life! And then money!” she had replied, then. What else could she say?

*

Some of Nami’s dreams were like aftershocks; deep rumblings in her mind that weren’t heard until days or even weeks after the events had been lived through and survived. They re-enacted some particularly intense moments, only slightly abridged and distorted; closer to reality and therefore often more frightening than the true nightmares.

She had yet to have any such dreams about Enies Lobby. But on several of those remaining nights in Water 7 afterwards, as they’d waited for the log pose to set and for the new ship to be built and for Usopp to come back, it was Skypiea that she found herself back in.

The metallic tang of electricity everywhere; the smell of burned flesh, burned wood, burned soil below; the hot sunlight in the slightly alien air so high above the Blue Sea; the gleam of the giant golden ship around her, rising higher and higher; the air still vibrating from the thunder-charges and maybe even anticipating future attacks; white-hot death leaning in utterly close and all but certain should she choose to reject the mad god smirking on his throne before her.

Sweating and trembling, her body felt weak and small and terribly alive; her mind determined to take in as much as possible of these wide-awake moments, these few seconds remaining to her, for of course there was no choice really.

“My own dream of the future? Sure, I’ve got one,” she’d told the god then (and was telling him again now, in her dreams). “But if I leave with you now, I will be entirely alone. A dream of the future without companions is worthless!”

At this point, the dream would let her remember that she’d been holding Luffy’s hat at the time, and how the coarse battered straw had felt against her hand.

“There are many things I want…and want to do! But if I have to abandon my friends for those things, to go with you…then I – I don’t want anything!”

Knowing such a thing about yourself, knowing she’d made that choice and would do it again – that should be reassuring, shouldn’t it? And she supposed that in her waking life it was. In a way, she even felt grateful for it. She’d thought as much the first time she’d awoken with a jolt from this dream, sweating in her bed.

But as long as the dream lasted, there was nothing at all comforting about this knowledge. In fact, the very certainty of her resolve, the hardness and sharpness of it, only served to make the moment even more terrifying.

 _This is the way it ends,_ she remembered thinking to herself.

No way she could run away anymore.

No way to avoid being brave.

In Nami’s dream, there was a taste of something luminous and trembling and hot and sharp in her mouth; something that was not quite despair but right next to it, on its wavering border. And the air was crackling with madness and power.


End file.
